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am a fan of silly holiday traditions. I love to carve pumpkins, dress up for Halloween, dye eggs, decorate Christmas trees, so as you can imagine, I jumped on the chance to carve a pumpkin for the App-o-Lantern pumpkin carving contest. (PSSST, by the way the top prize is an Apple TV! Check out the contest rules for more info)

Some of my favorite pumpkins designs are those that make use of a shaving technique to allow light to pass through certain portions of the pumpkin. Our pumpkin was Duck Duck Moose themed, but in case you are looking for something more traditional, here are some ideas and techniques to get you started.

Marthastewart.com is always a great place to start your search. Each year they post innovative pumpkin designs along with great how-tos. There are a host of tools that can make carving easier, for example:

A sharp knife or bread knife (for cutting a hole to hollow out your pumpkin)

A linoleum cutter (for shaving off sections to allow light to pass through your pumpkin

Miniature saws (for smaller cuts)

Power drills (for small holes)

Needle tool – found in most ceramic tool kits in an art supply store (for punching holes to mark a pattern)
mellon baller (for gouging out large round holes)

Cookie cutters

My tool kit was pretty sparse — I used a bread knife, paring knife, acrylic paints and some paint brushes.

Design ideas

From Martha Stewart (many of the templates for these and how-to’s can be found on marthastewart.com)

Other favorites from around the web

Pumpkin seed recipe
1. Rinse out the seeds with water (I did this in a colander) and pick out the pulp and strings
2. Coat seeds with a tbs of oil (I used meyer lemon oil for mine, but olive works fine)
3. Sprinkle seeds with salt or other flavors (this year I coated mine with chili powder and salt, but in the past have used lemon zest, herbes de provence and cayenne)
4. bake seeds at 325 until crisp